FOR YEARS Ben Franklin sat in his plain clothes, at his plain table, and ate his plain breakfast of bread and milk from a “twopenny earthen Porringer with a Pewter Spoon.” He lived by two words, “INDUSTRY and FRUGALITY … waste neither Time nor Money, but make the best Use of both.” Then one day Deborah called him to breakfast and he found his meal served in a china bowl with a silver spoon. Deborah made no apologies for her extravagance. “Her Husband deserv’d a Silver Spoon & China Bowl as well as any of his Neighbours,” she claimed. After the bowl and spoon, other luxuries crept into the Franklin household.
Franklin’s business skills and sharp eye for opportunity swelled the family bank account. His printing business thrived with government print jobs and contracts to print money. He’d become the official printer of Pennsylvania in 1730. His network of influential friends expanded when he joined the society of Freemasons in 1731. Three years later the mason lodge elected Franklin grand master.
The cover of Poor Richard: An Almanack
THANKS TO Franklin’s writing, the Pennsylvania Gazette grew into the most popular paper in the colony. In 1732 Franklin added Poor Richard: An Almanack to his publishing empire. Franklin believed an almanac offered “a proper Vehicle for conveying Instruction among the common People, who bought scarce any other Books.” For the next twenty-five years Franklin published the almanac under the name Richard Saunders, a character Franklin invented. He filled Poor Richard with snippets on weather, astronomy, history, and science and included jokes and longer essays. He adapted proverbs that promoted lessons about thrift, modesty, and common sense. A huge success, Poor Richard sold nearly 10,000 copies a year throughout the colonies, providing Franklin with a healthy income.
As the years passed, Franklin invested money to open print shops in other colonies. Some of his partners were printers trained by him. He supplied the printing press, types, and other materials. In return, he received one-third of the shops’ profits. Eventually Franklin owned partnerships in over two dozen print shops up and down the Atlantic coast.
Franklin established paper mills and may have been the largest seller of paper in the British Empire. He bought land in the West and rented properties. He loaned money and earned interest on the loans. Ben also earned the job of official printer to the neighboring colony of New Jersey. Some estimates place Franklin’s income at over £2,000 a year. The average tradesman made about £40 a year, while a lawyer might make £200. Even Ben marveled at his rise from poor runaway.
Half the Truth is often a great Lie.
Be at War with your Vices, at Peace with your Neighbours, and let every New Year find you a better man.
Glass, China and Reputation, are easily crack’d, and never well mended.
’Tis easier to prevent bad habits than to break them.
Beware of little Expenses, a small Leak will sink a great Ship.
A true Friend is the best Possession.
Epitaph on a Scolding Wife by Her Husband Here my poor Bridget’s Corps doth lie, She is at rest,—and so am I.
Up, Sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough.
Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, half shut afterwards.
Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise.
Three may keep a Secret, if two of them are dead.
Franklin greets people outside his print shop.
MATERIALS
Adult supervision required
Using scissors, cut the curved edges off the Styrofoam trays to get two flat surfaces. Then use a pencil to draw a design and title for your cover onto one tray.
Cut out all the shapes you want printed. Glue the foam pieces, front side down, onto the foam tray. By gluing it front side down, the design will appear to be in reverse. Let the glue dry.
Place newspapers on a kitchen table or counter. Put the foam tray on the paper.
Lay a sheet of aluminum foil on the counter. Pour some ink onto the foil. Roll the roller around in the ink so that the whole roller is covered. Add more ink if needed. Then roll the roller over the foam tray.
Place several sheets of paper on top of the tray. Roll the paper with a rolling pin, pressing the ink onto the paper.
Remove the paper, and you have your print!
FRANKLIN WORKED hard, building both his business and his character. He adored plans, lists, and ledgers. On the voyage home from London in 1726, he’d written a life plan, and in 1733 he began a new “Project of arriving at moral Perfection.”
I wish’d to live without committing any Fault at any time …a Task of more Difficulty than I had imagined: While my Care was employ’d in guarding aginst one Fault, I was often surpriz’d by another…. I was surpriz’d to find myself so much fuller of Faults than I had imagined, but I had the Satisfaction of seeing them diminish.
Franklin kept a weekly chart showing his progress living up to thirteen virtues. His chart included humility, industry (“Be always employ’d in something useful”), justice, temperance (not eating or drinking too much), order (“Let all your Things have their Places”), and tranquility (“Be not disturbed at Trifles”).
He grappled the most against pride. “Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it,… as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself…. For even if I could conceive that I had completely overcome it, I should probably be proud of my Humility.”
In 1733, after ten years away, Franklin visited his family in Boston. On a side trip to Newport, Rhode Island, he visited his brother James. “Our meeting was very cordial and affectionate,” Franklin recalled. When James died a few years later, Franklin took James’s son under his wing, sent him to school for a few years, and later trained the boy in Franklin’s print shop. James’s widow kept the Newport shop running until her son had grown. Then, Franklin helped the young man purchase new type. “Thus it was,” Franklin wrote, “that I made my Brother ample Amends for the Service I had depriv’d him of by leaving him so early.”
Franklin reconciles with James and meets his nephew.
IN THE 1730s, Franklin studied how dark fabrics absorbed heat more than light ones. He placed differently colored fabric patches on top of snow and measured how much the sun melted the snow beneath each piece.
“Black clothes are not so fit to wear in a hot sunny climate,” he noted. On the other hand, to improve ripening, the walls of fruit sheds could be painted black.
IN 1736 the Pennsylvania Assembly appointed Benjamin Franklin its clerk. He mingled with members of the government and gained a firsthand view of government workings. Jobs for printing votes, laws, and state money rolled into Franklin’s business. Sometimes, however, listening to the legislators drove him to boredom. He amused himself by making up math puzzles.
As he built his business and public career, Franklin never abandoned his goal of improving people’s lives. Using the Gazette to launch his case, he urged the formation of a fire protection society. He wrote out plans, created rules, and listed duties. The Union Fire Company organized in 1736 with fire engines, leather buckets, ladders, hooks, and other tools to fight fires. Franklin also promoted fire safety, offering advice on everything from how to carry hot coals between rooms to keeping chimneys safe.
In 1737, Franklin won the job of Philadelphia postmaster away from Bradford. The job paid little. As postmaster, however, Franklin vastly improved delivery of his newspaper, allowing him to sell more subscriptions and advertisements for the Gazette. “It came to afford me,” he noted, “a very considerable Income.”
IN THE 1730s a religious revival known as the Great Awakening swept the colonies. Relying on pure emotion, preachers such as Jonathan Edwards drove listeners sobbing to their knees with thunderous sermons unleashing the terrors of hell. But Franklin relied on reason over emotion. He felt that few ministers preached sermons stressing what he believed: that man honored God by showing “our sense of His goodness to us by continuing to do good to our fellow creatures.”
Franklin did not belong to any church, although he donated money to different ones. He’d kept the hard-work habits of his Puritan upbringing while shedding most Puritan religious beliefs. In 1739, however, curiosity spurred him to hear the traveling English preacher George Whitefield.
Whitefield preached to thousands at outdoor sermons, his loud, clear voice ringing over the crowds. Franklin approved of Whitefield’s generous charity work, but standing among the throng,
I silently resolved he should get nothing [money] from me…..As he proceeded I began to soften, and concluded to give the Coppers. Another Stroke of his Oratory made me asham’d of that, and determine’d me to give the Silver; and he finishe’d so admirably, that I empty’d my Pocket wholly into the Collector’s Dish, Gold and all.
The two men became friends, although Whitefield never succeeded in converting Franklin’s religious beliefs. Franklin believed the preacher was a good man and printed his sermons and journals—and made a tidy profit! Whitefield even stayed in Franklin’s home when he visited Philadelphia.
One item, however, left Franklin curious. Newspapers reported crowds of 25,000 crammed together to hear Whitefield preach. How could they all hear him? At one of Whitefield’s gatherings Franklin worked his way backward until he could no longer hear the preacher distinctly. Then with himself at the farthest point, he formed a semicircle in his mind through the Philadelphia streets and allowed each listener two square feet on which to stand. Franklin calculated Whitefield could be heard by more than 30,000 people.
English preacher George Whitefield
IN 1743, Deborah gave birth to a baby girl they named Sarah. Called “Sally,” the baby enchanted her parents, who’d lost their son Francis nearly seven years before. Franklin wrote to his mother that six-year-old Sally “delights in her books” and was learning to sew. He wanted his daughter to learn “industry and economy, and in short, of every female virtue.” Like most girls of the time, the emphasis on “housewifery” skills meant little formal schooling for Sally. Unlike her half brother, William, who had the best education available, Sally’s education focused on sewing, cooking, and running a household. Though Sally never had the quick wit Franklin admired in women, she was affectionate and dutiful and would become, as her father had hoped, “a sensible, notable and worthy woman.”
BRITISH OFFICIALS often rid their country of thieves, murderers, and other undesirable persons by shipping them to the American colonies. Ben Franklin protested against this practice. But he gave Britain a taste of its own medicine by shipping American rattlesnakes to England. “Rattlesnakes seem the most suitable returns for the human serpents sent us by our Mother Country,” he wrote, even though “the Rattlesnake gives warning before he attempts his mischief, which the convict does not.”
THE SUCCESS of the Junto prompted Franklin to encourage the study of natural philosophy, or science, in all the colonies. In 1743 he wrote “A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge Among the British Plantations in America.” With this document Franklin founded the American Philosophical Society. Franklin’s society reflected the 18th century’s growing belief that humans lived in an “Age of Enlightenment”—people could rely on reason. They could observe and understand nature. Through this new science of observation, individuals could improve the health and happiness of humankind.
Franklin hoped the society would seek undiscovered American plants, herbs, roots, and trees for study. He had faith that members would find new ways to cure disease and improve learning in many areas, including math, chemistry, the arts, the trades, mining, breeding animals, “…and all … experiments to let light into the nature of things,” he wrote.
His first attempts, however, led to disappointment. Unlike the roll-up-their-sleeves working-class members of the Junto, “The members of our Society are very idle Gentlemen,” he complained in 1745. “They will take no pains.”
Franklin expanded his network of like-minded friends. As postmaster he shipped samples of plants, foods such as apples and melons, turtles, snakes, wasps, and animal skins to fascinated Europeans. He carried on a lively correspondence with many leading botanists, natural philosophers, astronomers, mapmakers, professors, and doctors of the day.
But it wasn’t just intellectual gentlemen turning to science. Scientific lectures and experiments often served as entertainment. At private homes and theaters, people flocked to see models of the human body and blood circulating in a frog’s foot. They gawked at mechanical clocks and dolls, or the camera obscura, which projected pictures on the wall. They peered into microscopes to view animalcules floating in fluid.
“Electrical parties” were all the rage. Audiences marveled at “The Dangling Boy,” whose hair stood on end while sparks were drawn from his nose and fingers. Franklin was “surpriz’d and pleas’d” with the first electrical experiments he saw performed in Boston by Scotsman Archibald Spencer in 1743. Spencer sent mild shocks through volunteers. He caused loud sparks to fly and moved objects as if by magic using static electricity. Curious and excited by what he’d seen, Franklin was delighted when a European friend sent the Junto a glass tube for creating static electricity. He later bought Spencer’s electrical equipment at the end of the man’s tour.
FRANKLIN WAS furious when Pennsylvania faced a threat from French raiders while the Penn family and the mostly Quaker legislature did nothing to strengthen defenses. If the government would not act, then who would? “We, the middling people,” answered Franklin in a pamphlet, “The tradesmen, shopkeepers, and farmers of this province and city!”
In 1747, Franklin helped found the Militia Association to raise and pay volunteer militia companies to defend the colony. The Militia Association would be independent of the Pennsylvania government—a very radical idea. Men all around the colony signed up to protect Pennsylvania. Franklin’s local group voted him their colonel, but he turned down the honor and took his turn as a common soldier. Franklin oversaw the borrowing of cannon from New York, designed emblems for the militia companies’ flags, and sold muskets at the print shop.
Fellow citizens noted Franklin’s cool head and get-it-done attitude in a crisis. Over in England, Thomas Penn—William Penn’s son—noted Franklin’s activities, too. Who was this upstart Franklin? How dare colonists act outside of the Penn family’s government! What would prevent them from acting against the government? Penn declared Franklin “a dangerous Man…. I should be very glad he inhabited any other country, as I believe him of a very uneasy Spirit.”
COLONISTS USED large open fireplaces for heating and cooking. Not only were fireplaces dangerous, but also much of the heat drifted uselessly up the chimney. In 1744, Franklin manufactured an iron stove that could be built into a fireplace. The stove pulled in cool air, heated it, and then, instead of the warm air floating out the chimney, the heat moved around chambers in the stove, which radiated it back into the room.
Franklin did not apply for a patent on his invention. He believed “we should be glad of any opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours and this we should do freely and generously.” Franklin’s stove did not work quite as efficiently as he’d hoped, and eventually it fell out of favor.
MATERIALS
Tie one end of a piece of thread around a piece of cereal. Tape the other end of the string to the end of a ruler. Lay the ruler on a table so the string and cereal hang down without touching anything.
Blow up a balloon and tie it off. Then rub it on your head or your shirt.
Slowly bring the charged part of the baloon toward the cereal. The cereal should eventually swing up to touch the balloon.
Hold the balloon still! In a moment the cereal will jump away from the balloon. Now slowly move the balloon toward the cereal. This time the cereal should swing away from the balloon.
What happened? Initially, electrons moved from your hair to the balloon during rubbing, giving the balloon a negative charge (-) because it now had more electrons. The charged balloon attracted the neutral cereal. But when the cereal touched the balloon, electrons moved from the balloon to the cereal. Since both objects now had the same negative charge, the cereal jumped away from the balloon, and when you moved the balloon toward the cereal, the two similarly charged objects repelled one another.
GENTLEMEN HAD dabbled in electrical experiments for the previous hundred years. Scientists knew that rubbing a glass tube created friction and static electricity. A French naturalist had sent an electrical charge over 1,200 feet along a wet string. People knew that objects repelled one another when they carried the same type of electrical charge, while those with opposite types attracted one another. An electrical charge could pass between objects. And materials were tested to see what could become electrified (conductors) and what could not.
In 1745 a Dutch scientist perfected a way to capture and store electricity in a jar. The “Leyden jar” was a glass container holding water and iron filings. The jar sides were coated with metal foil, inside and out. People believed a wire through the top of the jar charged the water, though it actually stored a charge on the inside foil surface.
The Leyden jar allowed for a powerful and dangerous shock when discharged. Abbé Jean-Antoine Nollet used a Leyden jar to amuse King Louis XV of France. Nollet caused 180 soldiers clasping hands in a circle to jump in the air with a single shock.
Franklin eagerly began his own study of electricity. “I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done,” he wrote to Peter Collinson, a friend in England, in 1747. He practiced his experiments, then showed them off. “My house was continually full for some time, with People who came to see these wonders,” he recalled. Like other showmen, Franklin made bells ring, set an “electrical spider” in motion, and made sparks light up a portrait of the king.
With the help of some fellow Junto members, Franklin further explored electricity. He based his experiments on empiricism—that which can be observed. He discovered that electricity was not caused by friction, but instead was collected and moved by friction. A static electric charge could flow from one person to another when they touched. He also learned that electricity did not vanish; it was always there in some amount, but it moved from one object to another.
Franklin experimented with Leyden jars, as well. When he dumped out the water and filings, he learned that the glass jar itself held the charge, not the water. He lined up a row of glass plates surrounded by metal, wired them together, and created the first electric battery.
Franklin’s experiments dispelled the old idea that there were two types of electricity, vitreous and resinous. Franklin discovered electricity was a single “fluid” that had positive or negative charges that occurred in equal amounts. Today this is known as the law of conservation of charge. Though Franklin couldn’t possibly know about atoms or electrons, he realized that “the electric matter consists of particles” so small they could pass through matter. He also created new English words for the science of electricity, such words as conductor, charge, discharge, electrify, and others.
EVERYTHING IS made of tiny particles called atoms. The center of an atom is called a nucleus. The nucleus holds two kinds of tiny particles: protons and neutrons. A proton has a “positive” electrical charge (+). A neutron has no charge—it is neutral. Orbiting around the nucleus are even tinier particles called electrons. An electron has a negative electrical charge (-). An atom is neutral when it has equal numbers of electrons and protons.
While the protons in an atom’s nucleus remain in place, the electrons orbiting around can jump from one atom to another. If an atom loses electrons (which have negative charges), the atom becomes positively charged because it now has more protons, or positive charges. The atom that gains electrons now has more negative particles—it has a negative charge.
Electrons have trouble moving through certain materials such as cloth, glass, and plastic. These things are called insulators. Other materials, such as metals, water, and dry air, allow electrons to pass easily. These are called conductors.
An experimenter can move electrons from one place to another. The easiest way to do this is by rubbing two objects together. The rubbing builds up static electricity. This happens when there is an imbalance of positive and negative charges.
Interesting things happen when positives and negatives meet! The old saying that opposites attract is true when it comes to electricity. Positives and negatives attract each other. They will pull toward one another. Items charged the same—both are positive or both are negative—will repel, or move away from each other. Charged objects also attract neutral objects.
Static electricity causes your hair to stand on end in the winter when you pull a hat off your head. The hat rubs against your hair, and electrons move from your hair to the hat, leaving a positive charge behind. Each hair now has the same positive charge, so the hairs repel each other. They get away from each other by standing up and separating.
As Franklin pondered the mysteries of electricity, he listed 12 items that electricity had in common with lightning. The 1749 list included giving light, having a crooked direction, being conducted by metals, and a emitting a crack or noise upon exploding. Could lightning and electricity be one and the same?
MATERIALS
Blow up a balloon and tie it off. Rub it on your head (or shirt) to build up a static charge.
Place an empty soda pop can on the kitchen floor. Slowly bring the charged balloon toward the can. What happens?
Next, pick up the can and rub it on your head. Then place the can back on the floor. Rub the balloon on your head again. Slowly bring the balloon toward the can. What happens?
Use your knowledge of static electricity, charge, positive (+), negative (-), attract, and repel to explain what happened.
AS A hardworking printer, Franklin never pushed his place in society. He had never understood the need for a successful tradesman to fall into the trap of “an Ambition … to become Gentlefolk.” Movement up the social ladder rarely happened. Everything from dress to manners to speech marked class differences. “People of Quality” possessed education and a genteel air that a lower sort could never grasp, no matter how much money they made.
However, in 1748, at age 42, Benjamin Franklin took a momentous step. He retired from business, hoping to devote himself to good works, public service, and science. In the 18th century, gentlemanly work included serving in government and looking to the good of your country. In short, Franklin became a gentleman. Franklin prepared for his new role. He’d read more books than many true-born gentlemen. He could talk about numerous subjects. And, he’d even taught himself languages, learning enough French, Latin, Italian, Spanish, and German to get by. He knew gentlemen throughout the colonies, and though Franklin had been a tradesman, these men were used to dealing with him.
Franklin turned over the printing shop to a partner and moved his family away from the business into a new house in a fashionable area of Philadelphia. Writing remained a gentlemanly pursuit, so there was no need to give up his essays, letters, and pamphlets. Like any gentleman in the colonies, Franklin purchased several African slaves. Within a few years he adopted a coat of arms to seal his letters.
As a special sign of his new status, he had his portrait painted, an expensive luxury usually only for people of rank. For his portrait the shirt sleeves and leather apron are a memory, replaced by a dark green velvet coat, a curled wig, and a frilly white shirt with ruffles at his throat. Nothing too fancy or colorful, but the clothes definitely marked Franklin as a new man.
Franklin summed up his new situation to a friend:
I am in a fair way of having no other Tasks than such as I shall like to give my self, and of enjoying what I look upon as a great Happiness, Leisure to read, make Experiments, and converse at large with such ingenious and worthy Men as are pleas’d to honour me with their Acquaintance.
Franklin, dressed in a fashionable wig, points to a stroke of lightning.
Franklin’s new leisure time allowed him to devote attention to electrical experiments and social improvements. Most of all, he hoped to produce “something for the common benefit of Mankind.”
FRANKLIN SPEEDILY advanced in Philadelphia affairs. The same year he retired he was elected to the Council of Philadelphia. In 1749 he was named a justice of the peace. Two years later, in 1751, Franklin became a city alderman and was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. For the next ten years Franklin won reelection. Though he struggled against pride, he couldn’t help feeling “flattered by all these promotions, for, considering my low beginnings, they were great things to me.”
Franklin quickly gained power in the assembly. While Franklin seldom rose to speak, he worked tirelessly behind the scenes. He shaped members’ opinions and brought groups together. He served on committees, writing letters and responses to the governor. He studied proposals and penned reports. Always ready to promote William’s future, too, Franklin got his son a job as clerk of the assembly.
The formation of the Militia Association in 1747 had soured the relationship between the Penns and some members of the legislature, including Franklin. William Penn’s sons viewed Pennsylvania more as an unending source of money than the Quaker experiment of their father. Some legislators grumbled that the proprietors should help pay the costs of running the colony. Other citizens paid taxes on their property—why should the Penns get a free pass on hundreds of thousands of acres belonging to their family? Over the next few years, Franklin emerged as the foremost opponent of the Penns.
Franklin viewed his seat in the assembly as a springboard to further improvements. To make Philadelphia’s streets safer, he proposed paying full-time professional night watchmen. In 1752, Philadelphia’s government adopted Franklin’s night watch plan.
For years Franklin dreamed of establishing a school open to any willing young man, not just the sons of the elite. His plans included classes in practical subjects such as writing, math, and accounting instead of classes emphasizing religion and languages. After raising funds, Franklin launched the Pennsylvania Academy in January 1751. Forty years later Franklin’s school became known as the University of Pennsylvania. Another Franklin scheme raised money by getting the legislature to match funds from private donors to pay for the founding of Pennsylvania Hospital.
Starting on his own block, Franklin convinced shopkeepers that Philadelphia’s filthy streets—piled with garbage, manure, and dirt—hurt business. He submitted a plan where everyone paid a little to hire workers to clean the streets. People seemed pleased with the results and “more willing to submit to a Tax for that purpose,” Franklin noted. He proposed to the legislature that city streets be paved, since they were little more than swamps when it rained and were choked with dust when dry. To top off these improvements, he designed new street lamps. A vent in the bottom kept the glass panes free of darkening smoke smudges. Franklin felt that these changes, though sometimes small, contributed to peoples’ happiness and safety.
The title page and frontispiece of Experiments and Observations on Electricity, 1774 edition.
IN HIS electrical experiments Franklin followed the methods of Sir Isaac Newton: science based on empiricism. Franklin’s writing skills and organized mind ensured his observations were understandable to most readers, not just the most educated. He and his scientific pen pals always traded information. Franklin sent his electrical observations to Peter Collinson.
Excited by Franklin’s findings, Collinson passed the letters on to a London publisher, who released Franklin’s writings in April 1751 as Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America. The book became a huge success and zipped through multiple printings and translations into other languages. In September 1752, Collinson happily wrote to Franklin, “All Europe is in Agitation on Verifying Electrical Experiments….All commends the Thought of the Inventor.”
The fact that Franklin—a “rough” American lacking education—had written this made the feat all the more remarkable to Europeans. Benjamin Franklin had stepped suddenly onto the world stage.
FOR CHRISTMAS 1750, Franklin invited a few friends to dine on turkeys he would kill using electricity stored in Leyden jars. Distracted by the guests, Franklin’s demonstration went dangerously wrong. With a great flash of light and a crack loud as a pistol shot, the electric current surged into Franklin’s body. Afterward, having narrowly escaped death, Franklin tried to describe what he felt: “a universal blow throughout my whole body from head to foot, which seemed within as well as without.” One of his hands turned white and felt “like dead flesh.”
LIGHTNING’S UNKNOWABLE, vast power sparked fires, tumbled chimneys, split trees, maimed, and killed. For centuries people rang specially blessed church bells and whispered prayers that God would save them from “the stroke of lightning, the harm of thunder, the disasters of storms, and all the spirits of the tempest.” Lightning remained a mystery, though many people, including Franklin, suspected that lightning was a form of electricity. But how could you prove such a thing? He laid down the challenge: “Let the experiment be made,” he wrote.
In 1750 Franklin wrote several letters to Collinson proposing an experiment to test if lightning was indeed electricity. Franklin himself did not try the “sentry box” experiment he designed. A Frenchman, Thomas-François d’Alibard, tested the experiment in May 1752. During a storm, a man sat in a wooden sentry box built on a hill. Atop the box a pointed rod rose 40 feet into the stormy sky. The rod came down through the sentry box’s roof. The man inside held a wire that touched the rod. If the rod became charged with electricity from lightning, the man would see sparks. For safety, the wire had a wax handle and the man sat on an insulated padded stool that would not conduct an electric charge. As Franklin had predicted, the rod attracted the lightning and electrical sparks showered down upon the man.
Three days later, d’Alibard reported his success to France’s Academie Royale des Sciences in Paris. “In following the path that M. Franklin traced for us, I have obtained complete satisfaction,” he wrote. Others in France, Germany, and England performed the sentry box proof verifying Franklin’s ideas and d’Alibard’s results.
Across the ocean in Philadelphia, however, Franklin knew none of this. In June 1752, he attempted his own proof that lightning was electricity, but instead of the sentry box, he switched to a kite. With 21-year-old William assisting him, Franklin flew his kite into a storm. He attached a sharp pointed wire to the top of the kite. The twine leading down from the kite had a silk ribbon attached, and from the ribbon dangled a key.
As the wind buffeted the kite, the woven strands of the twine became electrified, stiffened, and stood on end. Franklin slowly moved his knuckle toward the key and felt a mild shock. As rain fell, the electricity moved faster through the wet twine, causing the key to throw off sparks. Franklin collected some of the electricity into a Leyden jar.
For Franklin it was not enough to prove that lightning was indeed electricity. Could he figure out a way to use this knowledge to benefit people? Like many others, he had hoped that electricity would provide the power to cure or heal, especially that it might wake “sleeping” limbs. Electrical shocks, they believed, could animate paralyzed legs by removing blockages of “life fluid.”
Franklin used shock treatments for “palsies,” or paralyzed muscles that would the move uncontrollably. Patients reported sensations of warmth and prickling in their limbs, but the feelings lasted for only a few days. “I never knew any advantage from electricity in palsies that was permanent,” Franklin wrote to English physician and friend John Pringle in 1757. He thought people had benefited more from the exercise of coming to his house and the “spirits given by the hope of success.”
Using a kite, Franklin and William test if lightning is electricity in June 1752.
Franklin returned to earlier experiments with a pointed bodkin (needle) pulling electricity from a charged metal ball. A blunt piece of metal did not attract the charge as well as the pointed one. Perhaps a sharpened iron rod on top of a structure would do the same. This metal rod could draw lightning from a thundercloud and carry it harmlessly away from a house, church, or ship, preventing fires and damage. Franklin placed a nine-foot rod on top of his own house. He installed rods on the Pennsylvania Statehouse and the Pennsylvania Academy. Poor Richard offered suggestions for how to install a lightning rod in an article titled “How to Secure Houses, etc., from Lightning.”
Even before his famous electrical experiment with the kite and key, Ben Franklin made kites. As a boy he once made a kite and let it pull him back and forth across a pond. Franklin’s famous kite was made from a large silk handkerchief.
MATERIALS
Adult supervision required
To make the kite, cut a small notch into both ends of each of the dowel rods (sticks) with a craft knife or saw. On the longer dowel rod, measure 6 inches from one end and use a pencil to mark the spot. Measure and mark a spot 10 inches from one end (halfway) of the shorter dowel rod. Then, on a table, lay the shorter stick on top of the longer stick, matching up the marks. This will form a cross shape. The notches should line up parallel to the ground.
Wrap the string tightly around and around the center of the sticks, using an X shape. This will hold the two sticks together. Pull your string to the top of the cross. Thread the string through each of the notches, pulling it tight as you go around the sticks to make a diamond shape. Go around twice. This makes the frame for your kite. Pull the string back to the X on the sticks. Wrap the string around both sticks again, then tie it off with a knot.
Using scissors, cut the trash bag open to make a large sheet of plastic. Lay it on the table and place your kite frame on top of it. Use the kite frame as a guide to cut out the plastic. Be sure to cut the plastic a few inches wider than the frame.
Fold the plastic over the frame and tape it down in place. Put extra tape at the top and bottom tips.
Using a toothpick or needle, punch a small hole through the top and bottom tip of the kite. Cut a two-foot length of string. Tie one end of the string through the top hole. Knot the other end through the bottom hole. This makes the kite’s “bridle.” Take the ball of string and tie the end onto the “bridle” about one-third of the way down.
Tape or tie a two-yard-long string to the bottom of the kite to form a tail. This gives the kite balance. Tie your ribbon, or cut strips from an old sheet, onto the kite tail.
Take your kite to an open area on a breezy day and let it soar.
Franklin’s lightning rod worked—and is still used today!
FRANKLIN’S BREAKTHROUGH work with electricity earned him honors in America and Europe. One European philosopher claimed Franklin had stolen fire from the heavens. In May 1753, Harvard awarded Franklin an honorary degree, soon followed by one from Yale. The Royal Society in England bestowed its top prize, the Copley Medal, on Franklin.
Franklin’s success, however, also brewed controversy. Abbé Nollet seethed that Franklin got credit for work also done by others. Nollet sneered at the lightning rod, claiming it was more likely to attract danger than provide safety. As a churchman, Nollet disapproved on religious grounds, as well. It was “as impious to ward off Heaven’s lightnings as for a child to ward off the chastening rod of its father,” wrote Nollet.
Franklin dashed off a note to a friend. “Surely the Thunder of Heaven is no more supernatural than the Rain, Hail or Sunshine of Heaven,” he noted, “against the Inconvenience of which we guard by Roofs & Shades without Scruple.” As to the lightning rod, “They continue to bless the new bells and jangle the old ones whenever it thunders,” he wrote. “One would think it was not time to try some other trick; and ours is recommended.”
Franklin the editor and writer. A Leyden jar and electric dynamo appear on the shelves.
But many agreed with Nollet. Who were men to tinker with God’s punishing thunderbolts? On November 18, 1755, in the dark of night, an earthquake rocked southern New England. Many of Boston’s church leaders blamed Franklin and his lightning rod. They claimed lightning rods channeled God’s “resentment” into the ground. A few months later news arrived that a November earthquake had also struck Lisbon, Portugal, killing tens of thousands of people.
Benjamin Franklin. In the background lightning destroys a house.
“The more Points of iron are erected round the Earth to draw the Electrical Substance out of the Air,” wrote Boston minister Thomas Prince, “the more the Earth must needs be charged with it.” Boston had more lightning rods than any place in New England, “and Boston seems to be more dreadfully shaken. O! There is no getting out of the mighty Hand of God.” The use of lightning rods in Boston declined for years to come.
These criticisms did not stop Franklin from continuing to study electricity. He tried several hypotheses, without success, to show what caused electrification of the air to begin with. After experiments in the spring of 1753, Franklin became the first scientist to challenge the idea that lightning struck only from a thundercloud down to the earth. He realized that lightning also sprang from the earth (the positive charge) up into the cloud (which was negatively charged) as the atmosphere tried to balance its electrical equilibrium.
Electricity turned Benjamin Franklin into the most famous American in the world. He changed the study of electricity from an amusement to a science. Yet he wondered what it all meant. An inventor tried to benefit humankind, he wrote, but “if they do not succeed, expose him, though very unjustly, to general ridicule and contempt; and if they do succeed, to envy, robbery, and abuse.”
But a little ridicule or envy couldn’t stop Franklin’s ever-curious mind. Once, when riding with a group of friends, Franklin spotted dust and leaves swirling on the road ahead—a whirlwind was forming. “The rest of the company stood looking after it, but my curiosity being stronger, I followed it, riding close by its side.” He chased the whirlwind for nearly a mile, trying to break it up by thrusting his riding crop into the vortex. Not until broken branches whizzed at his head did he retreat. Franklin had described himself perfectly. His curiosity about the world around him was stronger than most.